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Up there with Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Bruce Springsteen as one of the great American tragedians of the last century, playwright Eugene O’Neill was notoriously not a bundle of laughs.
It’s no surprise, then, that his one and only comedy, ‘Ah, Wilderness!’ is infrequently revived and hardly belly laughs a go go.
It is, however, extremely charming. It follows fired-up 16-year-old Richard (George Mackay), scion of a modestly well-off New England family, his head full of controversial European literature, his heart bursting with precarious teenage love for local girl Muriel (Georgia Bourke).
Not a huge amount happens beyond that: we see some of the machinations of Richard’s WASP-y but loving household; Richard rails against the unfairness of the world a lot, gets dumped by Muriel, goes out and gets hammered, has a slightly awkward encounter with a hooker, and has a tentative rapprochement with his true love.
O’Neill’s writing and director Natalie Abrahami’s production beautifully capture not only the ludicrousness of youth, but also its gasping vividness, the wonder of a world in which everything seems terribly, terribly significant. I loved Dick Bird’s set, which locates all the action on what seems like a nocturnal beach, the sense of teen romance rarefied by the swooning suggestion of moonlight and lapping waves. And Mackay is great: gawky, intense, silly, serious, vibrantly alive.
The play is a touch unfocussed and not all of Abrahami’s decisions are entirely appealing: having David Annen wander the stage as the spirit of O’Neill himself is an avant-garde flourish that feels misplaced, if not especially intrusive. Still the play’s young hero is the main thing, and here Richard’s spirit soars beautifully.